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December 30, 2008

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Al Franken said he believes he is “on track to win” the Minnesota Senate race against Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), in a statement released by his campaign today.

These were the first comments Franken has made in several weeks, as he has remained silent throughout most of the recount process.

“I'm glad to be ahead, and as it appears that we're on track to win, I want Minnesotans to know that I'm ready to get to work for them in Washington on Day One,” Franken said in a statement.

Franken also sent out an e-mail to his supporters with a similar message.

The state's Canvassing Board finished allocating several disputed ballots to the count this morning, with Franken increasing his razor-thin lead to 50 votes over Coleman.

The board still needs to resolve disputes over some 1,347 uncounted absentee ballots that were mistakenly rejected by election officials. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that those absentee ballots are expected to further increase Franken’s lead.

The two campaigns have feuded over how many ballots should be included. Franken's campaign wanted to immediately count the 1,347 absentee ballots but the Coleman campaign wanted to add an additional 650 rejected absentee ballots to the count – largely from Republican-friendly precincts.

Coleman’s campaign has signaled that it will challenge the results in court if it’s trailing at the end of the recount process.

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ENow that he's lost, eup the place. He's not the classiest guy in the world. He's already badmouthing the election officials, and a week a go he had a meeting with some of the Swiftboaters. http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/gop-recount-guru-advises-coleman-2008-12-22.html

Franken is such an egotistical loser. He doesn't know anything about Minnesota. He conveniently came back thirty years later in pursuit of power... what a joke. I'm so embarrassed to be from Minnesota. This is worse than Jesse "the Mind" being Governor.

Republicans think Minnesota is stupid, and they think Franken is stupid. But that's about as much as they have to say. They sound terribly stupid themselves, and you end up wondering if they came from one of the inbred states.

Just a reminder to our below-average posters: Coleman never won the election. No one will win until the election is certified, and that hasn't happened yet. Franken never lost and isn't a "sore loser", but he hasn't won yet either. Everything is proceeding according to law.

Why not have a new election. Clearly, the process now is very subjective and either Coleman or Franken understandably will be angry it they are deemed the loser. I have no confidence in the courts or legislature to adjudicate this. Just have a new election. It is too important to leave the decision to the politicians.

The total net swing of the election, from the completely unofficial phone-in returns on election night until now, was about 0.03%. Nothing unusual about that. The net swing between the first official report the day after the election and now was less than 0.01%. Nothing unusual about that. Some changes went Coleman's way, some went Frankes way, and the change was tiny. republican tweakers should just chill. It looks like Coleman probably lost.

Please Dems, keep sending your best and brightest to deal with the huge crises our nations faces. Republicans will be back in power in no time. Seriously I love the fact this clown is going to Washington.

With the help of his wholely owned subsidiary, the Franken Vote Manufacturing Company (known by it's other name, the Canvassing Board), this potty-mouthed, dirty-minded, porn-writing, carpet-bagging tax cheat is stealing this election through the use of double-counted ballots, completely manufactured votes (Coleman votes stolen and given to Angry Al by his Canvassing Board employees).
This is making Florida look like kindergarten. The democrats are experts at election theft and no one but the most partisan will ever take this New York carpetbagger seriously. He's already a joke here. Just wait til the rest of the country gets a taste of his mean-spirited charade.

John Emerson wrote: Republicans think Minnesota is stupid, and they think Franken is stupid. But that's about as much as they have to say. They sound terribly stupid themselves, and you end up wondering if they came from one of the inbred states.
We also think you are stupid.
Say hello to your mother/sister for us.

Its laughable Republicans are talking about a stolen election when they stole the biggest one of them all. Katherine Harris was used up and thrown away like trash too. Cant wait until she writes a book.

As someone who actually LIVES in the state of MN. I can personally say that this has been a transparent and legal recount. The public is able to observe the proceedings as it is done in the moment. To the wing nuts on the right: If your man loses, put up a better candidate next go round if you want the popular vote. To the wing nuts on the left: If your man loses, put up a better candidate next go round. To all the plumbers in the house, PULL YOUR PANTS UP!!!! I'm outta here...

silver lining of a franken win: we get to link him to amy on everything, sinking 2 dem senators for the price of one. first she goes, then if al survives his term without getting arrested or impeached he will be gone after 1 term.
mark ritchie and the liberals will end up costing the party 2 senate seats in a blue state, all out of a lust for power and a desire to cheat to win.

NO CATHERINE HARRIS HERE...NO FLORIDA STYLE THEFT HERE...IT MAY BE LONG AND TIRESOME BUT IT WILL BE THOROUGH...REPUBLIKANS CAN WHINE AND MOAN AND COMPLAIN BUT THE FACT IS THE RECOUNT IS ACHINGLY PROPER...JUST ANOTHER NAIL IN THE NEO-CON COFFIN...

When will all of you Repubs come up with something new instead of your tired, hateful spite everytime a Democrat is elected in this country! Face the fact, you dodos; America is wise to you. You have run our economy into the ground with your agenda and it will take us years to get out from under the mess you Repubs gave us, if ever! For such a supposedly 'patriotic' party, the Republican Party seems to be doing its best to keep a significant majority of the population of this country poor and at the mercy of the rich. The Democratic Party at least tries to help the least of us, and that means I will never cast a ballot for any Republican candidate for state or federal office. A country should be judged by how it treats the worst-off of its citizens, not how well it treats its rich!

civil war wouldnt turn out well for the liberals. mccain beat obama by 45% among military personal. petraeus is a republican. just look at the marines that ignored obama when he payed them a visit. it pains our troops to have to salute this joke of a man.

At some point Minnesota, the state and its constituents, must decide to stop the process and pick a winner. Otherwise the process could go and on and on. Who ever loses the first recount will now want another recount. Ballots that were excluded coould be included by court action. A senator must be seated. Once seated he could not be unseated, however. The main issue is once having seated a Senator and it turns out the other guy won what kind of political support will that Senator have both at home and in the Senate? So the process must be stopped at some point or junction where upon it is generally agreed that all the votes were counted. I think that point has been reached. If Mr. Coleman doesn't like it he could sue but all that would do is destroy any future politcal career.

civil war wouldnt turn out well for the liberals. mccain beat obama by 45% among military personal. petraeus is a republican. just look at the marines that ignored obama when he payed them a visit. it pains our troops to have to salute this joke of a man.

I don't completely discount the possibility that some conservative will resort to violence once they realize that the country has rejected them, but Max here seams to be mostly hot air and BS. I'm sure that if someone else did the dirty work he'd cheer them on, though, in his feeble way.

Well it's interesting that one would post that "he's not the classiest guy in the world"(Coleman) when the other option is Franken....
The reality is, in any other year Franken would have lost by 10 points...he had good timing as the stars (and by stars I mean the wake of Bush rejection) were aligned to condemn most Republicans to defeat to - in Many cases, much lesser candidates...certainly true in MN.
I'd put down $$ right now that even in this fairly reliable Dem state, Al will be a one termer. I might even put $$ down now that he doesn't even run for a 2nd term.

Minnesota is not a "reliable Democratic state" except for Presidential elections. We've had more Republican than Democratic Senators over the last 30 years. It's a very competitive state. (As for your main point, Franken is way classier than the grafting sleazeball Coleman. But in many respects he wasn't right for Minnesota.)

Use Diebold machines next year and we won't have to listen to all these republican whimpers and epithets.They will finally be able to win the same way they always have.BY CHEATING!.Not to mention lying and taking advantage of backwards southern folk and their religion.What do you call a smart student in Alabama? SNOWBIRD!

Just keep counting until the Democrat wins - it worked in WA state. Statistically Franken's gains are impossible. Here are the facts:
Virtually all of Franken?s new votes came from just three out of 4130 precincts, and almost half the gain (246 votes) occurred in one precinct -- Two Harbors, a small town north of Duluth along Lake Superior -- a heavily Democratic precinct where Obama received 64 percent of the vote. None of the other races had any changes in their vote totals in that precinct.
To put this change in perspective, that single precinct?s corrections accounted for a significantly larger net swing in votes between the parties than occurred for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, or state house races.
Tell me again how there isn't dirty dealing going on.

3MTA3, There isn't dirty dealing going on. The recount was demanded by law, not requested by any candidate. It has been open and above board throughout. You may not like the results - you obviously don't like the interim results - but the process is as clean as we've ever seen.

You talk about a New York carpetbagger. I'm from Brooklyn and Coleman went to James Madison High School. We currently have 3 US Senators from Madison, but hopefully, in a couple of weeks, Carpetbagger Coleman will be a one termer who switched parties and lucked out when Paul Wellstone was killed

3MTA3: If you have any proof that is of a legal standard, then you might want to forward it to the MN AG. You should know that even the Republican Governor, Tim Pawlenty has stated that there has been "NO illegal or suspicious activity" with regards to the recount and how it has been conducted. He also has further stated how pleased he is with the "transparency and the process". So you alone "3MTA3" have the power to break this thing wide open. Or is it just your mouth that is wide open?

Posted By: wingnuts to the right and wingnuts to the left | December 30, 2008 at 10:11 PM

When he was ahead by 100 or so votes, wasn't Coleman calling on Al to forego a costly recount? If he truly meant that, shouldn't he now call it off and concede? Apparently he was insincere. Go figure...

Hahahahahahahahahaha!
Al Franken is going to be the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota. That is so cool. Besides Hillary and Obama, he is the only other person that I donated money to in this election. This makes me so happy. What a great election year this has turned out to be. Too bad republicans. You guys don't even seem to understand what happened and appear to be gearing up to do the same thing again in 2010. I hope you never learn from your mistakes and keep trying to please the religious right. Don't forget that the only thing that matters to you is abortion, tax cuts and hating gays.

Votes need to be tracable to an individual to eliminate fraud. Anyone REP or DEM can get a bunch of blank voter ballots, fill them out, say they were lost in the trunk of a car and get them thrown into the election. Most people who run elestions are political zealots to start with, a a dual party system at every voting place might help. It's time to stop the massive voter fraud that is happenig all over the country. Every vote ballot should be signed and dated by the voter. Every vote colud then be independently verified. That was the way it was done 200 years ago. When everyone is assured that their vote counts, and it is authentic, we might start to get the kind of politicos we deserve, instead of what we are getting through hook and crook.

Patrick, Please visit www.idiotronics.com. You are the very reason I get my broken handicapped old body out of bed and faithfully roll down to the voting booth to cancel out your misguided and malicious vote. Fill your heart with life and love and leave that Joker hahaha hate behind, sir. It's hurting your insides.

Well said James Dean! People like Patrick don't care HOW they win, they just want to win. Unfortunately this leads to mob rule and election theft, the likes of which is happening in my native state of Minnesota right now. This ultimately leads to a breakdown of civilized society, and then then the law of the jungle. For those of you who long for this sort of lawlessness, you'd better get armed quickly! Oh, wait a minute, there is an alternative to this sort of chaos, FASCISM. People like Patrick don't seem to mind that either. The vote is being STOLEN in Minnesota! For those of you smart enough to see the big picture, you had BETTER step up to the plate!

Re: JINGOIST/James Dean
What survivalist sect do you two belong to? To much Aryan Nation I suspect. I get the biggest kick reading some of these comments. I would hope that we'll be able to continue to read your comments in the future. The Republican Party is the party of Joe McCarthy and his heirs, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Ms. Sarah Palin. Clearly the majority has spoken in this past National election/referendum. As to the state of MN. They have done a competent job of working this recount to its conclusion. Someone mentioned in an earlier post that their own Republican Governor had faith in the process. Perhaps you two should just go and purchase some more ammo and dig that shelter a little bit deeper and then come out when your Apocalypse or "end of days" has past.